To provide you with a holistic understanding of the impact emerging FinTechs will have on the future of financial services, GIBS partnered with Strate to host the Fintech Innovation Conference during August 2017. The videos for the following topics are now available online: Welcome Remarks from Strate; Keynote Address from the Deputy Governor […]

The 24 financial market players who form part of the SA financial blockchain consortium (SAFBC) have been recognised for their blockchain research efforts in the Banker Technology Projects of the Year Awards 2017. The Banker is owned by the Financial Times and is one of the world’s premier banking and finance resources, read in over […]

Four members of the ‘Liquidity Alliance’ (LA), an international group of central securities depositories (CSDs), are cooperating with Deutsche Börse to launch an initiative leveraging blockchain technology to ease cross-border mobilisation of security collateral. With the planned solution, The Canadian Depository for Securities Limited (CDS), Clearstream (Luxembourg), Strate (South Africa) and VPS (Norway) want to […]

All too often, good infrastructure goes unnoticed. This is probably one of the reasons why few South Africans know and understand the country’s Central Securities Depository, Strate, however, without it, investors would shy away from South Africa.
Prior to the implementation of Strate in 1999, SA was categorised as one of the worst emerging markets in terms of operational and settlement risk. Trading volumes on the stock exchange were averaging 4,000 trades daily, very thin when this is compared to the 350 000 on average during a month today.

On 13 October, Strate held its Africa Blockchain Summit in Johannesburg to educate the market about Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology. The event was a great success, attended by over 200 delegates. Below are some pictures from the Summit. Ten blockchain experts, including four international speakers, presented at the event. The following presentations have been […]

Blockchain, the online distributed ledger technology, has the potential not only to fundamentally disrupt the global financial services industry, but also disrupt how monetary instruments and assets are transferred, stored and traded. Leader of Rand Merchant Bank’s ‘Blockchain’ initiative and one of the founders of the bank’s FinTech unit, Farzam Ehsani told a recent […]

The Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) Strate, South Africa and NSD, Russia have signed a Letter of Intent at the Sibos event in Geneva in September 2016. The intention is to forge a partnership between the two CSDs to develop solutions utilizing Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) with the first use case focused on proxy voting. […]

Tanya Knowles, Strate’s former Head of Business and Innovation and now the Executive Director of Fractal Solutions, a Division of Strate, spoke at a Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) Forum to introduce the concept of blockchain and unpack some of the latest developments around this disruptive technology.

There is a frenetic and rather exciting energy amongst many financial services institutions. Boardroom debates and conference agendas are quickly morphing from staid conversations on risk management and regulation to fintech, the internet of things and most noteworthy the potential disruption by blockchain technology. As with all new and exciting innovations, there is somewhat of […]